


The Nicotine Club

by TellHerThis



Category: Caduceus | Trauma Center Series, Trauma Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-12
Updated: 2011-11-12
Packaged: 2017-10-25 23:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TellHerThis/pseuds/TellHerThis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You smoke it,” Gabe told her. “Don’t act like you don’t know what you’re doing. After three months in the nicotine club, you should have figured that one out.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was after midnight, and Gabriel Cunningham was not surprised.

Sure to stand outside of the teenager’s peripheral vision, Gabe watched as Alyssa Breslin struggled against the icy night wind to light her cigarette. Her thumb spun the lighter’s ignition with no success. A few curse words later, and Gabe thought he’d put her out of her misery.

“The trick is to shield the end of the cigarette from the wind as you light it,” he said, taking the implements from her. “You also need a new lighter,” he added “This is empty. Here. I have mine.”

With shock and confusion etched on her face, Alyssa gingerly took the lit cigarette from him. She made no further movement, except to look up at her mother’s friend questioningly.

“You smoke it,” Gabe told her. “Don’t act like you don’t know what you’re doing. After three months in the nicotine club, you should have figured that one out.”

“Okay. How did you know how long I’ve been smoking?” Alyssa asked. “I haven’t told anyone.”

Gabe smirked. “Please. You don’t think I noticed when my cigarettes started going missing? Lisa’s been bugging me for years to quit, and Joshua can’t lie to save himself. That leaves the only other person in the house, who just happened to move in at the same time my cigarettes started going missing. Coincidence?”

Knowing she’d been caught, Alyssa sighed. “No. I’m sorry. I’ll pay you back.”

“Don’t bother. I’ve been deliberately leaving them in places you would find them.”

“What? You’re not pissed?”

“No.”

“But... why?”

“I used to steal cigarettes from my parents when I was your age. I can’t be a hypocrite now, can I?” Gabe said. “And I know things have been rough for you the last few months with your mom being sick and you have to move in here. If you need a cigarette or two to get you through the day, I’m not going to grudge you that. There are worse things you could be doing.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“If you ever want to talk about everything that’s going on...we’re all here for you, you know.”

With a scoff, the teenager exhaled the cloud of smoke. “Well that’s crap. Nobody’s always there for anybody. Sooner or later they all abandon you. They’ll betray you, or they’ll be blown into a million pieces or they’ll have a relapse of some freak show genetic mutation. Sooner or later, you’re on your own.”

“Naomi’s in good hands. Derek Stiles is a legend; he’ll figure something out.”

“No, he won’t. C’mon. The first time he was here, he tried extracting the GUILT cells. Second time, tried using Stigma to fight them: that just made her condition worse. Hell, he even injected her with a non-contagious form the Rosalia Virus, and all that did was put her in the ICU for three weeks. If Superdoc was going to figure something out, he’d have done it some point in the last nine years since he diagnosed her. Besides,” Alyssa sighed, “they’re all too busy fighting SHAME now. You really think they’re going to worry about one person when that thing’s wiped out half of Tokyo? No. They’ve filed Naomi Kimishima away under ‘Lost Causes’.”

As much as he didn’t want to, Gabe had to concede.

“I know she’s dying. You don’t need to bullshit me.”

“No,” Gabe frowned. “I guess not.”

“When I went to visit yesterday, it took her three attempts to get my name right. She kept calling me Alice. First time I thought I might have heard her wrong, but by the third attempt I really wanted to punch a wall. On my way home I had to pull over, I was crying so much. She’s not her. I guess what they say is true,” Alyssa mused. “Karma’s a real bitch.”

“I don’t believe in Karma. What did anybody do to deserve Rosalia?”

“Nobody deserved GUILT either and we both know that story,” Alyssa spat, and then took a drag of the cigarette. “So, you’re really not going to lecture me about lung cancer or strokes or heart disease or how these things will kill me one way or another?”

“No. I figure, when you’re seven times more likely to die of some man-made disease, why not take your chances on the traditional methods of dying? When was the last time you heard of someone dying of lung cancer anyway? I haven’t seen a case in years. On the other hand I’ve seen plenty of viral haemorrhagic fever, GUILT, Stigma and I expect to the first case of SHAME to walk through the door any day now.”

“The world sucks.”

“Amen to that. Does...” Gabe hesitated, before asking a question he’d been reluctant to previously. “Does Navel know how your mom has deteriorated? Has he tried to get in touch?”

Alyssa’s eyes narrowed to a glare into the distance. (It was exactly the reaction Gabe had expected when he brought up the topic.) “If he does know,” snarled Alyssa, “it’s not because I told him. If he ever did dare to ask me anything about my mom, I’d find it exceptionally difficult not to kill him with my bare hands. I wouldn’t spit on him if he was on fire; I’d stand there and watch the bastard burn. ” The teenager inhaled one last drag of her cigarette. “You’re not going to tell my mom about this, are you?”

“Even if I wanted to, she’d just forget what I said two seconds later.”

Alyssa laughed bitterly. “She’s not going to live until my graduation, is she?”

“If you want my honest opinion,” Gabe said, “no. She’s not. Even if, by chance, she is alive, I doubt she’ll know what her own name is, let alone yours.”

Gabe thought he might have seen the teenager’s eyes glaze over with a thin film of tears, but if there was one thing he knew Alyssa had picked up from her adoptive mother it was that she seldom let people see her emotional.  
Alyssa cleared her throat before continuing. “You’ll be there, right?”

“Are you kidding?” Gabe answered, causing the slightest of smiles to creep across Alyssa’s face. “Tomoe and Maria are gonna be there too.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. They asked for the day off months ago. And Maria’s going to be pleased that we have another smoking buddy. Speaking of which.” He removed the cigarette box from his pocket. “One more?”

“Better not.”

Gabe shrugged and lit his own cigarette. “Suit yourself.”

“Thanks, anyway. You know, for everything.”

“You’re welcome, kid.”

“I should go back inside. I don’t think my chem teacher will be amused if I tell her the reason I’ve fallen asleep at my desk is because I spent all night outside smoking.”

“I’d be amused if a seventeen-year-old student had the cojones to admit that in my class,” Gabe said. “Oh, and one little piece of advice before you go: if you’re going to smoke out the bathroom window, make sure you don’t set fire to anything. Maria Torres has a great story about that.”

“Okay, I’ll try not to set fire to anything,” Alyssa chuckled. “But I wanna hear the rest of that story.”

“Ask Maria at the next meeting of the nicotine club.”

Alyssa nodded. “Will do. “


	2. Chapter 2

An FBI raid on a Delphi base had gone badly, badly wrong. They didn’t know who was shot and who was infected, but the first influx of patients was expected to arrive at Resurgum First Care in five minutes.

The FBI chose to raid a suspected base the same week that Superdoc Derek Stiles was in town for a well-publicised conference regarding the recent terrorist activity. Coincidence? Dr Alyssa Breslin thought not, and she’d made her thoughts on that clear several times since news of crisis had broken much to the chagrin of the other interns and medical staff around her.

“You all ready for this?” Gabe Cunningham – head diagnostician– asked the clutch of interns.

If the other interns hadn’t been around, Alyssa might have unleashed a sarcastic response to remind him that they’d barely graduated medical school four months ago so no, they were not ready for this but they’d do it anyway. Instead, she held her tongue. Her colleagues didn’t know that in a former life she used to live in their boss’ attic.

Alyssa was more nervous about this than she’d ever admit to any of them. Any of the interns anyway, since Gabe had probably already noted the clenched fists and combative stare that had manifested as soon as the ‘D’ word was mentioned.

She’d already donned the yellow protective gown when the boss man pulled her aside.

“You sure you can handle this?”

Frankly, Alyssa resented the implication that she couldn’t. “Why wouldn’t I be able to handle it?”

“Forget I asked.”

The siren wailed. An ambulance had pulled into the emergency bay.

“Breslin. You’ll take this one,” Gabe instructed.

Alyssa stepped forward, just as the ambulance pulled to a stop by the entrance. By the time she’d snapped on the hideous blue nitrile gloves, the paramedics were wheeling the patient in.

“Is this one of the federal agents?”

The question had been directed at the paramedics, but it was Alyssa who answered.

“No,” she snarled. “It’s one of them.”

The only person not muttering a question of how Alyssa could possibly know that off the bat was Gabriel Cunningham. For one thing, the Chiral Reaction Positive male being wheeled through was wearing a black and orange. It had been a long time since Alyssa had bumped into any feds, but that certainly was not their uniform. His face was more drawn than she remembered it, eyes sunken further into the skull. Hardly surprising, given the chiral readings. His hair had turned from blonde to grey in the years since, but there had been a time long ago when Alyssa had considered the Delphi agent on the stretcher as her father.

“Alyssa?” His voice was strained, though Alyssa wasn’t sure if it was due to age or whatever strains the bastard had infected himself with. “That’s you?”

Perhaps it was delirium induced by fever, or maybe he thought that in a decade Alyssa would have forgotten all that had happened, but he tried to reach for the arm gripping the stretcher. Alyssa snatched it away, leaving nobody controlling the right side of the stretcher.

“Don’t. Even.”

His cough was sharp. Blood trickled from the sides of his mouth, a sure sign of internal bleeding. “Just let me die. Just let it be quick.”

“How about I get a gun? See how you like it.” Alyssa leaned down, just so he could hear her perfectly clearly. “You, you son of a bitch, are not getting off that easily.”

“Breslin,” Gabriel interrupted firmly. ”I think you should sit this one out. Don’t you? Get someone else.”

This time, Alyssa didn’t argue with him.

\---

The last time Gabriel Cunningham had been at the hospital doors to receive the first of the raid patients it had still been light, and the sun had still been warm. He was looking for Alyssa, though he suspected she’d have long ago gone home. Or to a bar, which would be his first stop if he’d endured the day she had. When he stepped outside, he discovered his suspicions were wrong. He walked over to the shelter where Alyssa was standing with a lit cigarette held firmly between her index and middle fingers.

“I thought you’d have left the nicotine club by now.”

Alyssa shrugged her shoulders as she brought the cigarette to her mouth. “I tried to quit a couple of times,” she admitted, the smoke escaping as she spoke. “But when you’re thirteen times more likely to die of some man-made disease than you are of anything smoking related, it doesn’t seem worth it.” She held out the cigarette box in offering.

“My thoughts exactly,” he answered, taking a cigarette. “I’ve been smoking for near on thirty-five years; little point in quitting now.” He stood beside her, leaning on the cold metal railing. “So what ever happened to ‘I’d stand and watch the bastard burn’?”

“Changed my mind,” Alyssa answered quickly. “Nine years gave me a lot of time to think.   
Knowing that he’s dead isn’t enough. I decided I want to see him suffer. I want him to slowly rot like my mom did.”

Alyssa’s bitterness couldn’t have been any clearer if it had sprouted legs and kneed Gabe in the groin. “I remember you being a sweet girl a long time ago,” he remarked.

“You do?” she sardonically queried. “I don’t.” Alyssa stubbed out the cigarette on the railing – the third one since she’d been standing there. “My mom would have killed me if she found out I’d smoked since I was seventeen,” she noted, with a look down at the discarded stubs.

“Please. Your mom could hear the voices of the dead through her Voodoo Hotline. I’m guessing she’s got some way of finding out things from the afterlife. She knows. She’s somewhere in the afterlife writing you a list of every disease you might contract. And when you eventually do kick the bucket due to emphysema, she’s going to be at the pearly gates shaking her head and saying ‘I told you so.’”

“She so is, isn’t she?” Alyssa chuckled at the mental image of her ghostly mother’s disapproving look, despite her best effort to suppress it. “I wasn’t going come back to Portland, you know,” she continued. “After college, after med school. I could’ve gone anywhere. I was all ready to accept an internship in Jacksonville. I’d looked at apartments and everything. Then I got the offer from Resurgam and somehow I ended up back here. I don’t know why I came back – I don’t know why I even applied – but here I am.”

“Yeah, you walking through the door as one of the new interns was a helluva surprise.   
Especially since nobody had heard from you in, oh, eight and a half years.”

Remorse swept across Alyssa’s face. “Sorry about that. I was always going to call, and whenever there was a vacation period coming up I’d tell myself I was going to make myself visit, but I never did. I never wanted to. I wanted to stay as far away from this place as I could. When I went to college, it was nice not to have people know who I was. Nobody gave me the sad eyes when I passed them in the corridor. Nothing was tainted. Here, I’ve nothing but bad memories.”

“We both know that isn’t true.”

“Oh yeah?” Alyssa challenged. “I’m back here three months and look what shows up.”

“From what you said earlier, I’m guessing you’re angry about more than just him leaving your mom. So, are you going to tell me what really happened back then?”

Alyssa sighed heavily. Although she had never told the honest story, the memories frequently invaded her sleep. ”When none of the treatments worked, and we found out my mom was terminal, he left, but not before holding a gun up to the two of us. I walk into the living room and he’s actually got his finger on the trigger. I scream and he aims it at me, just for a few seconds before he aims it back at Mom. I’m freaking out but my mom, she’s cool as ice. She’s telling him ‘what’s the point? I’m dying anyway, your organisation’s going to get what it wants’. He looked at my mom, then at me, then back at my mom. And then he just.... left. He lowered the gun and he just walked out of the house. You know, he was working for them, for Delphi the whole time he lived with us. He was relaying information to them about my mom; I guess they wanted her blood for handing over samples and information to the authorities. So they ordered him to kill her.”

Gabe could only exhale loudly in disbelief.

“She made me swear not to tell anyone. If the FBI found out she knew he’d been with Delphi, they’d have revoked her plea bargain. And who wants to spend their dying months in a prison cell?”Alyssa explained. “You know that son of a bitch had the audacity to look guilty while he was holding the gun?”

“The irony.”

Alyssa raised an eyebrow at the quip. “There were times when my mom was so demented she was in adult diapers that I wished he’d done it. That he’d just shot her there and then so it would have been quick, and her death wouldn’t have been a long drawn out painful process. And as her condition was deteriorating, I kept thinking that this was his fault. It was his fault my mom had been exposed to this thing in the first place. He was one of the lunatics that created it. But then again, so was my mom in a former life, so I guess I should blame her just as much.”

“Your mom wasn’t a bad person,” Gabe said. “She did some bad things, sure. But her mistake was to believe they were a saving grace. She didn’t know what she was getting into, and god knows she paid the price for it. Naomi wasn’t a bad person.”

“And him? You knew him too. Did you think he’d be the type of person to be involved in something like that? Do you think he was a bad person?”

“I don’t know,” Gabe replied.” I always thought he cared for Naomi and you. I can’t imagine him wanting to harm either of you.”

“Neither could I until then, but he still aimed a gun at us,” wearied Alyssa.” You trust people, and they hold a gun to you. Lesson learned: Don’t trust people.”

“That’ll serve you well in life,” Gabe said sarcastically.

“It has for the last ten years,” Alyssa spat back. ”We both know my mom was a good person, really, but do you think it makes the slightest difference bit of difference to all those people who lost someone to GUILT that she was forced to be a part of Delphi? As far as they’re concerned, she was just another terrorist. They’d dance on her grave if she hadn’t been cremated.”

“Are you going to dance on his?”

Alyssa broke her forward stare to look at Gabe. “He didn’t make it through the surgery, did he?”

Gabe frowned. “Afraid not.”

“Wow,” Alyssa said flatly. “Another rousing success for Superdoc.”

“Derek Stiles has saved a lot of people over the years.”

“He didn’t save my mother.”

Gabe held his tongue to avoid telling her nobody could’ve saved her mother. Alyssa knew this, of course, but Gabe had encountered enough grieving people to know that sometimes there just had to be someone to blame. There was no use in arguing with her.

“So,” Alyssa said with a bitter laugh. “He gets off Scot free, then? That’s just fantastic.”

“His internal organs were ripped to shreds by multiple advanced stage Kyriaki. They were surprised he lived with that as long as he did. He’d have been in a great deal of pain.”

“Not for long enough,” Alyssa responded, almost before Gabe had completed his sentence.

“Even if he’d gone the same way as your mom,” Gabe said, “it wouldn’t have been enough for you. Nothing would.”

It took her a few seconds of thinking for Alyssa to eventually reply. “You’re probably right.”

“You’re bitter about everything that happened, and anybody would be in your shoes. But don’t let bitterness ruin your life, Alyssa. Don’t let it stop you from making relationships with people, or from going to medical conferences that other interns would give their left arm to be at because the person leading it is Derek Stiles. You don’t want to get to my age and realise your life’s passed you by. Trust me.”

Alyssa didn’t respond. She just stared straight ahead.

“Chief says you’ve to take the rest of the day off,” Gabe told her. “And man, do you look like you need it.”

“But –“

“No ‘buts’. The crisis is over, and the hospital can go without one scut monkey for the night.”

The slightest of smiles appeared on Alyssa’s face. “Thanks.” She held out the almost empty pack of cigarettes. “One more for the road?”

“I would but I’ve got a ton of paperwork to catch up on and they stopped me smoking in the hospital building years ago.”

Alyssa shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“You going to be okay?”

“I’ve got my friend here,” Alyssa said, holding up an unlit cigarette. “We’ve been fine for years; that’s not going to change.”

Gabe began his retreat to the hospital building. “Don’t be disappearing off the face of the planet again, okay?”

“I’ll try my best,” Alyssa answered. “See you tomorrow.”


End file.
